Mojourner, speaking as someone who *was* a punk - and on the subject of dancing like you don't give a hang who's watching. Because that is what dancing is for. I'm struck (not for the first time in his remarkable explorations of the punk scene he let me spectate from time to time) at how clearly, how freshly, I remember some of these faces. The spiky mullet in front. The fro to one side.
What he describes comes back, too. The chicken fights, the on-the-spot made-up dances, the getting on stage. He hasn't mentioned the time he was one of the "aweem-awep" dudes for a spontaneous rendition of "The Lion Sleeps" - and, in fact, how frequently spontaneous classics like that came up. Sometimes sped up to 78 (as Mo said recently, an hour or so could hold thirty-eight thousand punk songs - or something far funnier, frankly, but to that effect ...). Sometimes screamed, sure. But sometimes, and not infrequently, pretty much in their original arrangement. The guys on those stages were musicians, after all, as much as rebels. Sometimes, rebellion could be performed with respect for music unlike their own. Punk had a lot more taste than exclusively for irony, and it's easy to forget, in the post-'net world which has come to so intensely depend on snark - not everything even the strident anarchist had to say back then was said with a sneer.
Anyway, amazing photos once again, and remarkable memories I am enjoying very much.
(Also of note: "history, brought to you by women." In and of itself, a fascinating phenomenon of the dynamics of - at least "our" little corner of - punk.)
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